A Starship Technologies robot drives along the sidewalk on First st., Thursday, Aug. 8, 2019 in West Lafayette. The self-driving delivery robot is mapping the Purdue campus according to an employee.(Photo: Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – For the past month, Purdue students have seen little robots making their way across campus, down sidewalks and across streets. They’re white and cooler-sized, with six little wheels and a long pole with an orange flag alerting those around of their presence.

On Monday, 30 such robots, owned by Starship Technologies officially began delivering food on Purdue’s campus.

Purdue is the largest university campus and the first in the Big Ten Conference to have partnered with Starship to offer the delivery service, which operates through an app called Starship Deliveries. The app is available to download through the App Store and the Google Play Store. The service works in conjunction with student meal plans, costing $1.99 per delivery.

To use the service, users open the app and choose from the listed restaurants their food or drink items of choice. They then drop a pin where they want the delivery to be sent and can watch in real time as the robot picks up the items and makes its way to the pin. Once the robot has arrived, the user will be alerted and can unlock the cooler inside to retrieve the items ordered.

Each robot can carry around 20 pounds at a time, allowing it to carry multiple orders at once.

An example of the restaurants available to order at Purdue from the Starship Deliveries app.(Photo: Emily DeLetter/Journal & Courier)

The lid is locked throughout the robot’s delivery journey, said Chris Neider, senior manager of business development at Starship.

“No one is going to steal one of your fries or take a sip of your drink,” Neider said. “It’s locked in there.”

The robots are equipped with 10 cameras, travel at a maximum speed of four miles per hour for safety and have six wheels built to be adaptable for icy and snowy conditions.

Although Starship is based in San Francisco, California, Purdue’s strong engineering program and “innovative style” seemed to be a good match for the robots start delivering.

Starship’s robot deliveries have launched at other campuses around the county, including George Mason University in Virginia and Northern Arizona University in Arizona. But with 43,000 students, Purdue is Starship’s largest campus-based clientele.

“We’ve discovered that there’s a need there,” Neider said on launching at other universities. “There’s a huge demand for this service. Students want stuff delivered, they want it delivered affordably and they want it delivered throughout the day and night.”

Neider said Starship will be hiring students for a “whole host of jobs,” including people to take the robots back to the home base and recharge them overnight. Fully charged, the robots can operate on electric power all day, from the time deliveries start at 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. when they stop.

“I definitely think it’s the future of delivery,” Neider said.

The process for acquiring the robots and negotiating with Starship began over the summer and was a fairly fast process, said Beth McCuskey, Purdue’s Vice Provost for Student Life. In August, the robots began to drive around, mapping the campus and creating delivery routes.

“(The robots) totally ties to innovation,” McCuskey said. “Purdue is known for our innovative thinking and our innovative deployment, plus we have some of the coolest food.”

For now, the 30 robots will make deliveries with the six available restaurants, a list which Purdue hopes grows over the next couple of months. Even as the robots were mapping campus, McCuskey said she saw the student reaction as quite positive.

“I think overall, the robot technology ties so well with Gen-Z and their expectations for cool new things that it’s a natural fit,” McCuskey said.

Purdue senior Faith Kirchhoff, a marketing student from Avon, Indiana said she was first confused about the robot’s presence and jokingly worried that the “robots were taking over,” but was intrigued after seeing the design and learning of their delivery capabilities.

She planned to order food via the robots on Monday, to see what it was all about.

“I think it’s a good marketing plan, because everyone I know has been curious whenever we see them around,” Kirchhoff said. “It’s super cool that they’re around campus, and it will be a lot easier than having to leave and go get food. They seem like they’ll be very convenient.”

Emily DeLetter is a news reporter for Journal & Courier. Contact her at (765)420-5205 or via email at edeletter@jconline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @EmilyDeLetter.